New Tack Urged in Inter-American Affairs

In a Washington Post story on Feb. 27, a list of authors of a report prepared by the "Ad Hoc Working Group on Latin America," sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, did not include the name of study coordinator Roberta Salper, IPS Latin American Unit director. Robert, Pastor, whose name was listed as an author of the report, said he was neither an author nor a signatory of the final report.

A commission of influential Latin American specialists has recommended that the Carter administration accept and support socialist governments in the Caribbean, consider a gradual phaseout of foreign military assistance and impose a human rights policy on public and private U.S. lending to Latin American countries.

The commission's report, to be published Monday by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-wing think tank here, calls for a "new approach to inter-American relations," including a rethinking of U.S. "pratices and assumptions" that are "outmoded, ineffectual and morally unacceptable."

The report was commissioned by IPS and written by seven Latin specialists from diverse, but primarily liberal, points on the ideological spectrum. The specialists include Abraham F. Lowenthal, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Latin American program; Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins Univeristy, and Robert Pastor, recently appointed Latin American staff director for the National Security Council.

Many of the policy changes the report recommends are nearly identical to those presented in an earlier report by an establishment-oriented commission headed by Sol M. Linowitz, former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Like that report, the IPS commission recommends early development and implementation of a new Panama Canal treaty and U.S. initiated improvement of relations with Cuba.

The new report, however, to be distributed to Congress and State Departments and administration officials, addresses a wider range of issues and suggests more radical alternatives.

Among its recommendations are: That the United States consider granting amnesty to an estimated 2 million to 6 million illegal immigrants in this country.

Improvement of U.S. tariff preferences for Latin American countries and the end of trade discrimination against the oil-producing nations of Venezuela and Ecuador.

That the United States adopt a Policy of support for "ideological pluralism" in respect to countries such as Jamaica, which has recently developed into an ostensible "problem area" for the United States because of itse socialist government.

Many of the report's recommendations, buy its own admission, "reach beyond the most widely accepted solutions" to hemispheric problems.

The most far-reaching proposals are in the areas of acceptance of socialist governments and human rights.

Communist or socialist governments in Cuba, Jamaica and Guyana, the reports says, offer a "a unique opportunity to establish a new pattern in U.S. foreign policy." The United States must "not intervene to shape governments and societies to our views and preferences." This includes U.S. refusal to "boycott or isolate any country because of political or economic differences. It means that our nation will not attempt to subvert foreign governments.

More generally, the reports says, "it means that the U.S. government must recognized that both the need for change and forces propelling such changes in the developing areas are powerful and urgent."

On the other hand , the report says, the United States must not continue to Provide preferential aid ttreatment to countries that systematically violate the human rights of their citizens, such as Chile. While the Chilean millitary government "has proven it self on the most oppressive in the history of Latin American . . . it was until recently, on of the most favored nations in the world in terms of U.S. private and public support," the report says.

Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for The Post. In more than three decades at the paper, she has served as bureau chief in Latin America and London and as correspondent covering the White House, U.S. foreign policy and the intelligence community.